Human Rights on the World Stage

As part of the 1949 UNESCO Human Rights Exhibition seminar series, the Institute for the Study of Human Rights presents

Human Rights on the World Stage

A Talk by Sharon Sliwinski, Associate Professor of Information and Media Studies, University of Western Ontario

With Commentary by Rosalyn Deutsche, Adjunct Professor of Art History, Barnard College

Date and time: Monday 9 December 2013 at 6.15pm

Location: 602 Hamilton, Columbia University

The 1949 UNESCO Human Rights Exhibition operated both as cultural document and as educational implement. Sharon Sliwinski proposes to highlight some of the tensions involved in transposing human rights into these terms. What will be under particular scrutiny are the fantasies that drive such educational campaigns, namely, that proper knowledge will bring about social progress. Professor Sliwinski will address the historical lineage of this fantasy, as well as its persistence in the present in form of “sites of conscience.”

This is the third event in a seminar series revolving around the largely unknown 1949 UNESCO Human Rights Exhibition – the first international event that sought to visually represent the history, meaning and content of the rights set out in the UDHR. The series will lead up to a new display of the exhibition archive at Columbia’s Buell Hall Gallery in April 2014. For more information, visit www.exhibithumanrights.org.

This seminar series is made possible with the support of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, the Center for International History, and the Center for Human Rights Documentation and Research.